Does Fish Oil Cause Prostate Cancer, Is Milk Healthy, Are Body Fat Scales Accurate & More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Does fish oil cause prostate cancer? Are body fat scales accurate? Is milk healthy? How to use a standing workstation, what to eat before surgery, and how to run downhill.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Well, Ben, you're looking a little shiny this morning.

Shiny, shiny and new. And I, I smell like a giant flavorful Italian pizza. It's my new gig. Actually, it's not a new gig, but we were talking about it before the recording, so we might as well because I've been doing it for like two years. Kerry Sullivan and I just noticed one of my buddies who's a pro triathlete down in Florida, he's like big time into like natural living and like, you know, not exposing his body to, to artificial crap.

He's the other guy from the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, right?

Yeah, he's my co coach at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. He smears his face with a extra virgin olive oil. And I started doing it when shortly after I met him. And it's just, it's this totally natural, super kind of like hypoallergenic way to moisturize your skin. And it's got like vitamin A and vitamin E in it. So when I'm out riding my bike and stuff and getting exposed to sun and you know, pollution and environmental hazards, you know, all the, all the cigarettes I smoke and the fast food I eat. Anyways, it helps with the skin. You can actually mix it with coconut oil too. You can do like, just like get a bowl, put it on your kitchen counter and do like a mash, like a one to one blend of coconut oil and olive oil. Because the coconut oil, if you have issues with like skin conditions like acne, it actually has some pretty cool antibacterial and antifungal properties and it helps to get rid of that. So yeah, you mix coconut oil with olive oil and you will smell like a giant Italian islander.

A giant Mediterranean fellow.

Well, kind of like a Mediterranean Samoan because you got a little coconut.

Yeah, you got a little coconut in there.

Yeah. Oh, the ladies love it.

Yeah. Actually I spilled some of my MCT oil the other day, like, which is, I know It's a terrible sin because that stuff's kind of expensive, but I made the best of it. And I rubbed it all over my hands and I still had some left, so I rubbed it on my legs and I put some of that on my face. Ended up I was so moist. It was awesome. My skin just felt fantastic for the rest of the day. I don't advocate doing that because of the cost, but I can see why, like, coconut oil and olive oil would work probably as well.

Liquid gold. And this show was brought to you by metrosexualmails.com hippie metrosexual males news flashes.

If you want to know everything there is to know about lactic acid. Oso. Oh, I was gonna get it right. If you want to know everything there is to know about lactic acid. Oxal.

Ah.

I practiced saying that word so I could do this. Oxalacetate. Is that how you say it?

Yep.

If you want to know everything there is to know about lactic acid, how to make yourself run longer, and of course, know everything there is to know about poop, go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com this week.

Hopefully not all three of those things combined. Yeah, as our longtime listeners know, I am always Tweeting over@twitter.com BenGreenfield all the latest studies I come across, and I follow a ton of books and journals and magazines. I'm actually doing a. A workshop for the group of personal trainers that I mentor over@superhumancoach.com and I'm going to give my insider resources. I mean, I'm going to show them the exact podcasts I subscribe to and the magazines I read, the journals I get, the books I read, and the 43 different blogs that feed into my. What used to be Google reader, but is now feedly. Anyway, so I'm constantly.

That's right. They killed reader, didn't they?

Yeah, Rather than. Than playing Scrabble while I sit on the toilet. I sit there with my Kindle and my squatty potty and study up. So there's a visual for you. Anyways, so I didn't actually picture it.

Until you said that. Damn it.

One of the. One of the things that I tweeted this week was you get about one third of your total carbohydrate energy during exercise. Not from gels, not from sports drinks, not from the superstar or something like that, but lactic acid. And this is through a process called the Cori cycle that we've talked about before on the show, but this study Actually, it kind of blew my mind because I didn't think that the percentage was that high. But this study, it looked at blood lactate concentration and then actually looked at lactate, what are called oxidation rates. And they found that carbohydrate utilization, that specifically when you inject someone with lactic acid, which is the same thing as lactic acid building up in your muscles, one third of energy that kind of feeds into the Krebs cycle and produces ATP from carbohydrates. One third of that energy was from lactic acid. Isn't that amazing?

That is. I knew there was a significant amount, but like you said, that's a lot higher than I would have suspected.

Now, I'm working on an article right now for BenGreenfieldFitness.com and it's part of the book that I'm writing. And this article, which I actually should be able to publish it tomorrow, if you're listening to this at the time that the podcast comes out. But it goes over some very interesting research that shows that the combination of a high fat diet with high intensity interval training actually improves economy and efficiency during exercise by about 5%, which doesn't sound like much, but it's huge. That's the difference between, like pedaling a bicycle at 300 watts versus 315 watts. And I think that one big reason for that is because you're able to train your body how to tap into fatty acids very efficiently as a fuel, right? But then the high intensity part of it is training your body to shuttle that lactic acid up to be able to be used as glucose to replace what you might normally be getting from gels and sports drinks, et cetera. So it's just this really, really cool, you know, if you look at it kind of from a crow's eye view, it's like it all makes sense. One supplement that I've talked about before that actually enhances this process is called oxaloacetate. And it's actually a popular anti aging supplement. Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Exec guy, actually sells oxaloacetate on his website as an anti aging supplement. But I actually get it from Dave, and I'll put a link in the show notes for folks if they want to grab a bottle and try it. But I get it from him because one of the researchers that I was speaking to at his bulletproof Exec conference outlined a very cool mechanism by which oxaloacetate upregulates the conversion of lactic acid into glucose. And so if you're going out for a hard, high intensity workout. Maybe something kind of steady state where you're producing lactic acid for a long period of time. This stuff, it helps. And I actually noticed a difference. I've trialed with and without. So it's. Oxaloacetate is a cool way to speed up lactic acid conversion to glucose for you lactate nerds out there.

So there really is like, our body has the complete process built in. We've just been skipping part of the process by dumping a whole bunch of sugar down our hatch.

Yeah, it's like, why would there be a need for lactic acid to be utilized as glucose when a ton of exogenous glucose is getting dumped in? So it's very interesting.

So as soon as we. Would it take a long time to sort of switch over to that? Or is that something that your body just innately knows how to do?

The more trained you are, the more efficient you become at lactic acid utilization. But that kind of relates to the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is another study that looked at trained athletes, in this case, highly trained cross country skiers. Skewers, Skewers. Just running around, dipped in spicy peanut sauce. These highly trained cross country skiers, they actually compared how they responded to different interval lengths of training. Like, like when you're actually trained, what kind of intervals are going to improve your endurance performance? The best. And what they found was that in the more trained individuals, longer duration efforts, like still efforts that produce lactic acid and are still kind of close to that, you know, slightly pain cave ish effort. But longer efforts gave these folks a lot more bang for their buck than shorter efforts. Specifically five to ten minute bouts worked better than two to four minute bouts. And I know that we've kind of kind of kicked the high intensity interval training horse to death before on this show and talked about how effective it is. But I think that sometimes athletes, whether we're anaerobic or aerobic athletes, we sometimes get a little carried away with these short efforts. You know, the 500 meter row and crossfit or the quick treadmill sprint for a triathlete or something like that. But you actually do like, the more fit you are, the more you benefit from throwing in some longer efforts. You know, we're talking like some, some 500 meter repeats in the pool or some, some bicycle efforts that are like two or three mile intervals rather than short sprints or, you know, running mile repeats rather than doing, you know, 30 second treadmill sprints. The, the more trained you are, the better These slightly longer intervals are for you. So takeaway message here is, you know, don't just do the short stuff, you know, and what I like to see is that, you know, if you were to look at things in like a two week training block that an athlete might, for, for any given two week training block, have one to two sessions that are like shorter, high intensity interval sessions and then one to two sessions that are longer, higher intensity interval sessions. So, you know, an example of how that might work out is that one week, you know, for, for your hard workout you're doing, let's say you're a runner, you're doing 400 meter repeats, but then the next week that same workout is, you know, 1500 meter repeats or mile repeats. So.

So did they talk about that just being a physical reaction or did they bring any of the mental component into it? Because I know personally that doing those longer hard efforts really prepare you mentally for that point in the race where everything just starts to suck and hurt and gives you that mental power to plow through.

That's a really good point. It's, it's not something that they looked at, but that's a, it's very astute observation, Brock. Per.

You can tell that I'm perhaps getting.

I should become the sidekick and you should become the.

Well, that's the master plan.

Whatever I am. Is it?

Yeah, well, it's my master plan.

Anyway, thanks for filling me in. Speaking of filling me in, let's talk, let's talk about stool transplants. How do you like that for a sedge way?

I don't know if I hate it or love it.

So this was an article that came out in the New York Times about donating your stool to a friend in need. And you know, the idea of fecal transplants is something that we've talked about on the show before in transplanting poop from one person into the digestive tract of another person kind of seems relatively repulsive. But the fact is that the bacteria in our stool really constitute a huge part of who we are. And there are literally hundreds of trillions of cells in what's called your microbiome. And many of these bacteria live down in your bowel, in your large intestine and in your colon. And the microbiome of that particular area is extremely important. Now some people suffer from what's called Clostridium difficile. And that's this dangerous strain of bacteria that's actually becoming an epidemic in especially lots of hospitals and nursing homes. And so the idea behind A fecal transfer or poop transplant or whatever you want to call it, Repopulate. Repopulating, is that you restore colonies of healthy bacteria that kind of dilute or crowd out the harmful strains. The issue is that a lot of doctors are shy about doing this. The FDA has decided to actually classify human stool that is used therapeutically as a drug. And they did that earlier this year in April. So it's only approved if you do a stool transplant plant within an FDA approved clinical study. If you're a physician who's going to do stool transplants for people who have ulcerative colitis or this Clostridium difficile or anything like that, Bacterial imbalance in the colon. So what the New York Times article gets into, and we'll link to it in the show notes, is it's the story of this guy who tried tracking down doctors who would help him and he finally found one doctor who obviously couldn't do it in his office, but he gave the guy complete instructions for doing a do it yourself fecal transplant for his buddy because this guy had healthy stomach bacteria and gut bacteria and his buddy had ulcerative colitis. So the process involved a blender and some enema tubing and a syringe and lots and lots of newspaper. But basically involved, based on the physician's instructions, a stool transplant. And lo and behold, it was actually successful and resulted in this guy. He said he literally felt better like minutes after the stool transplant took place. And apparently some patients, because of this new FDA rule, have actually been resorting to Craigslist to find helpful stool donors. And I usually rely on Craigslist for things like mow my lawn or come and purchase my old T shirts. But yeah, you can also use it if you just need to find some healthy poop. So there you go.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. Special, you know, announcements.

So the Thailand trip is blowing up, is it?

Yes, the. The big Thailand adventure that I'm leading people on. And, and it includes a, a pre camp with ton. We're doing a bunch of stuff. Bike fits run workshops, swim workshops. I'm dialing in some, some pretty cool guest lectures to come in. We're gonna do a big focus on health and nutrition and lifestyle and kind of that whole health versus performance component. We're doing like a five day luxury training camp at this place called Tanyapura, which is this awesome kind of health resort tucked away in Thailand. And then we move from there into another luxury resort where we, we hang for five days before doing the world famous Laguna Phuket Triathlon. And then we hop on this boat and we go to the secluded Railay Bay for three days to play with the monkeys and eat barbecued swordfish on the beach and hang out. And then after that we go back to that luxury resort that we were originally at and we hang out there for a few days before the brand new, what's called the challenge Half Ironman Triathlon there in Thailand. And then we party a whole bunch of and go home with lots of memories. So I am amazed at the interest in this event and it's beginning to. It's actually got more people now in it than I had originally planned on even letting in. And I'm actually considering kind of bringing another coach on board to help out with the crew because we're actually getting pretty big. But it's going to be a blast. You know, you kind of show up and you've got insty friends, insty folks to hang out with and a ton of fun. So it's@pacificfit.net Thailand if you still want in on that, you've got the flexibility to just kind of slip away for two or three weeks this winter. So check that out. And speaking of international travel, the, the Global Business Triathlon Conference in London has invited me to be a speaker. And that's this, this September in, in London. And yeah, it's kind of this global gathering of leaders in the triathlon business community. So if you're a coach or, you know, kind of a triathlon enthusiast and you happen to be near London anytime in September, we'll put a link in the show notes.

Great Britain, not Arkansas?

No, London, Ontario. London, Arkansas, exactly. London, Arkansas.

Is that how they talk there? I don't think so.

May I please have some fried chicken? So, yeah, London in the uk. The United Kingdom, for those of you who don't know what UK stands for. Anyways, it's right by Hyde Park. It's based out of the Hilton London there. It should be pretty, pretty cool. Cool. So we'll put a link in the show notes to that September 10th through the 12th in London. And then finally I should mention that there is going to be a special audio that we play at the very end of this podcast. So stay tuned when we finish up because there's stick around, there's some extras. You remember the Perfect Health Diet. Brock.

Yeah, I'm actually about 3/4 of the way through the book right now.

Awesome book. It's like this is actually part of another article I'm writing for people who aren't super active. It's like the number one diet that I, that I recommend, bar none, the Perfect Health Diet. It takes some tweaking if you're, if you're really active. In my opinion, it takes a little bit of added protein and some, some carbohydrate, what's called carbohydrate cycling. That actually isn't in the Perfect Health diet book. But the Perfect Health Diet is kind of my top recommendation if you just want a done for you diet book that explains the science and that I really stand behind and endorse, you know, in terms of like, nutrient density and compatibility with the actual human machine.

And it's really well written, too. It does a fantastic job of laying out why they did what they did and why they recommend what they recommend. I think that's like the most important part of the book. Like, instead of just knowing the what, you actually know the why.

Yeah, well, it was written by, by a. By astrophysicist, which makes it super smart cookie. Anyways, though, they are now doing a Perfect Health Diet retreat in Austin, Texas. And I'm actually going to be down there at that retreat speaking and presenting on how to kind of tweak the Perfect Health Diet if you're like a crossfitter or a triathlete or something like that. So we're going to do full details on that at the end of this podcast. I actually called them up and interviewed them about it. So stay tuned if, if you're into that kind of stuff towards the end and we'll, we'll play a little anecdote from that and yeah, I think that's it. Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben, this is Kelsey. I'm calling from Maine and I am seeing all over the place about this new study that says omega 3 fatty acids increase prostate cancer risk by a lot, like 71%. So I just wanted to know what your opinion is on this study. I'm sure you've probably heard about it and I know sometimes studies can be hard to decipher. They're not always what they seem. So just thought I'd call and see what your opinion is. Thanks a bunch. Enjoy the podcast. They're pretty awesome. Thanks. Bye.

Yeah, I'm surprised we only got two emails. You must have got a whole bunch more that I didn't even see. And a bunch on Facebook and Twitter.

And yeah, yeah, a slew of tweets about this, this study that came out last week from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research center, which found a. A link between blood levels of DHA, which is the omega 3 that you find in seafood and fish oil and the risk of developing nasty little prostate tumors. So this was all over the news last week and, and the rebuttals have.

Been all over the place too, in the last few days, I noticed. Yeah, the little blogs and stuff that I follow, everybody's got their rebuttal coming out, so.

Yeah.

So let's hear yours.

Well, first, first of all, this, the study kind of surprised me because there is a chain of research stretching back over a decade that shows that dha, which is that that part of the fish oil that is the best for you, actually is helpful and protective when it comes to prostate health.

So this is the dha, the epa, and the ALA is what the DHA and EPA are derived from.

Right. That was a pretty big Alphabet soup right there, Brock.

That sure was.

All you people who are in the middle of your bike ride right now, remember that. But this, this study of over 6,000 Swedish dudes found that the people who ate the most fish had drastically lower rates of prostate cancer than the people eating the least amount of fish. And then there was a study in New Zealand that found that guys with the highest DHA markers had a lower prostate cancer risk by 3, 38% compared to the ones with the lowest DHA levels. Then there was a study in Japan that found that omega 3 fatty acid levels in the blood were linked with a reduction in prostate cancer. So a lot of studies that preceded this that kind of made this one stick out like a sore thumb. So first of all, I guess fish oil is only bad for you if you're American, because this was all done.

In America, Swedish or.

Yeah, and that may actually I kind of sort of sort of joke, but it may actually be slightly true because there has been studies that have shown that a low fat diet intake, which we know that a lot of folks in America are on a low fat diet intake, actually increases levels of omega 3 fatty acids in the bloodstream, causes your body to churn out a bunch more of those long chain fatty acids into your bloodstream because you're not getting them from your diet. And so there could just as much be this link between a lower fat diet and prostate cancer as there could be between the omega 3 fatty acid levels and prostate cancer. So in other words, the people who had the higher amount of prostate cancer in this study may have been also showing higher levels of omega 3 fatty acids because they were eating a low fat diet. And perhaps, and this is kind of like getting out on a Limb, but perhaps that low fat diet that they were eating was actually not giving them what they needed to be protected against prostate cancer. So that's one thing, another thing, and it's, and it's very, very related. Here is the whole chicken versus the egg type of argument. It's like, were the omega 3 fatty acid levels present in the bloodstream in higher amounts in the folks who had prostate cancer? Because the folks who had prostate cancer cancer actually needed the elevated anti inflammatory effect of these omega 3 fatty acids. You know, it's like, were they being released as a protective mechanism? You know, so we don't know whether the omega 3 fatty acids were the, were the cause of the prostate cancer or whether they were actually being released to help fight the prostate cancer. So there is no, because all it was was just like a study where they took a giant population and sampled them and test prostate cancer and then tested omega 3 fatty acid levels. You know, we don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. The other thing that's really important is that there are lots and lots of fats that they didn't measure in this study. And as a matter of fact, about 80% of the different types of fats that were floating around in the bloodstream, from saturated to monounsaturated fats, were not measured at all. And when you look at the percentage of omega 3 fatty acids or DHA floating around in the bloodstream, that's about 5% of all the other fats that they could have measured. So this is a very, very small picture of what could be going on. And to measure just a tiny, tiny little percentage of the total amounts of fats gives us very little information when it comes to prostate cancer. Now, finally, nobody looked at the type of fish oils that these people were using.

That's the thing that I noticed too. It's like, okay, that's one thing that we talk about a lot on this show is choosing your fish oil wisely.

I just put out a video over@facebook.com BG Fitness asking the question, is your fish oil killing you? Because it is true that much fish oil contains fillers and synthetic materials and is full of free radicals that can cause damage to cells, including cells in your testes and your prostate. And literally, fish oil can be bad for you if you are not eating the correct type of fish oil. The best type of fish oil comes from small fish that thrive in cold waters that's been packaged to reduce the actual oxygen content in the bottle that's not been stored on shelves or exposed to heat. And that contains protective antioxidants to keep the fish oil from going rancid. Stuff like vitamin D and vitamin A and vitamin E and astaxanthin. And that is why I posted that video, was to point out the fact that, yeah, fish oil actually can be bad for you if you're not eating the right kind of fish oil. I pop anywhere from 4 to 12 fish oil capsules a day, depending on my level of activity and also depending on my calorie intake for that day. Like if I'm eating a low calorie diet for a day or I'm restricting calories or it's like a recovery day where I'm eating less, I actually pop more fish oil just to give me concentrated nutrients with fewer calories. And so, you know, like on a recovery day, I'll eat more fish oil up to 12 capsules. And I use the super essentials, which is a triglyceride natural based fish oil from small fish that live in cold water that has all those antioxidants in it. And that's the one that I would recommend. And I certainly do not believe that fish oil causes prostate cancer. I think, if anything, I highly suspect it's the other way around, that when you get prostate cancer and your body begins to fight off the cancer, that it's going to churn out higher levels of omega 3 anti inflammatory fatty acids into your bloodstream. So that's what I suspect is really what's going on here.

Hi Ben, thanks for the great podcast. I was calling in with a question about gadgets that measure body fat. So one of my co workers, knowing that I'm into sort of geeky health stuff, brought in this gadget where you enter your height, your weight and your age and then you hold onto the hand sensors and it spits back out at you. A measurement of your body fat percentage. And I wondered, first of all, how accurate is the result of this type of machine? And second of all, what's a good target number for your reference? I'm 25 and I weigh about 135 to 140 pounds. And the machine's back at me 15%. And I'm just wondering, is that a good target or too low, too high? So any help would be appreciated. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.

So I've heard that the most reliable way to do it is actually with the skin calipers.

Calipers are decently accurate if the person that is measuring you has done a bunch of them. Like you Know, one of my favorite gigs that I had was when I was a graduate student at the, at the University of Idaho Wellness Center. And so one of my roles was to sit in the graduate student office and work on, you know, developing our personal training program and to go out and oversee all the personal trainers out on the floor working with their clients. And then also to do free body fat percentage measurements for pretty much any sorority girl that happened to wander in and want her, her abs, her thigh and, and her triceps measured. So. And I happily obliged. So, you know, I did a lot of these skin caliper measurements. I've probably done close to a thousand. And it's very, very easy to grab an inaccurate pinch of fat or to vastly over or underestimate body fat if you don't know what you're doing. So you want to make sure if you go in and you get a skin caliper test at the gym, the person should just be like, you'll, you'll know right away. Like, they'll be super confident. They'll just be like, bada boom, bada bing, and they'll measure it. Typically if they've got like, some book open and they're like, looking at the book and then looking back at you and like looking up, okay, where do I measure next? Like, that's a pretty good sign that they shouldn't be doing the pinch method with you. But the skin full caliper measurement actually is pretty accurate. For ideal accuracy, you measure seven different places on the body. You can still get pretty decent ballpark for measuring three different areas on the body, but it's hard to do on yourself. As a matter of fact, you should go join the Cirque du Soleil if you can get a shoulder blade skin pinch measurement on yourself, because you've got some mad flexibility skills.

I hear they actually make you do that when you audition for Cirque du Soleil.

You would know, you would know, my ex ballerina friend. But there, there are definitely more accurate ways than skin calipers if you really want to, want to go into geek mode. So you've got hydro densitometry, which is underwater weighing. So you literally get dunked underwater and you let all the air out of your lungs. It is not pleasant, but it calculates your body density, and then you use your body density to calculate your body fat. And that's, that's really considered to be one of the gold standard measurements for measuring body fat. But you usually have to go to like, your local university, like, call them up on the phone, ask for the sports science department, you know, and that's a good way to find an underwater weighing lab. Not a lot of gyms have giant dunk tanks, if you hadn't noticed. DEXA scans are decently accurate. And that's a full body scan that you'd usually get to measure, you know, bone density. But, you know, it's a full body scan. There are other full body scanning devices out there. MRIs can do it. There's one called the Total Body Electrical Conduct Test that can do it. Connecticut scans can do it. All those are interesting because they give you. They give you an idea of where the fat is actually distributed because you get a visualization. Now, there's a home measuring device tool. You know, I used to have one. I sent it to one of my clients because I wasn't using it. But it's like this ultrasound wand. I think we talked about it on the podcast before, but it's literally a home unit. And it's like, it's very similar to the data that you get from an MRI or a CT scan. Totally blanking on the name of it. We'll have to go back. I remember that I'm writing a note to myself. We'll go back and find a link to that one in the show notes.

Yeah, it was really cool. It was almost like the little thing they use on a pregnant woman. It looks like that sort of a device.

Yeah, yeah, I'll try and remember to get a link to that in the show notes. But yeah, I mean, it's like, it's like I want to say 200 bucks or so. I think I even have like an affiliate link for it. So they kick a few bucks back our way. If I, if I can hunt down that link somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. But anyways, yeah, that's intelligent intellimetrics. There you go, Intellimetrics. I'll. I'll find it and put a link in the show notes. And then you've got. Actually, I wonder if the intellimetrics. It's ultrasound. That's what it is, ultrasound. So, yeah, you've got that one. There's another one. This one's pretty hard to find too. It's called near Infrared Interactance, or nir. And that's where they hold a fiber optic probe against your skin, usually on your biceps. And they use this little painless light to penetrate your tissues. And the light is reflected back off your bones into the detector. And that approximately.

They actually, they used One of those on the latest episode of Dexter.

Oh, nice.

If anybody watched Dexter last week, they.

Probably used it on some episodes. Star Trek, like 20 years ago too.

It was, the guy that was using it was a cannibal and he was sizing up Dexter to see if he wanted to kill him and eat him.

Seriously? Really? And then he was measuring his body fat with that.

Yeah, yeah. He wanted to get like an idea of his body fat and guess muscle mass and all that kind of stuff to decide whether to kill them and eat them.

That is, that is really interesting. So. And it was, it was a near infrared. So. Yeah, there you go. Near infrared fiber optic probe. Add that to your home gym tools or to your, to your, to your cannibal kit, to your cannibal collection. BOD pods. Those are those kind of expensive space age looking pods that. And you can find those at a lot of fancier health clubs and a lot of physiology labs. And that just uses sensors to measure how much air your body displaces when you sit inside the chamber. And it's not bad. It's pretty close to that underwater weighing without requiring you to hold your breath or put on a Speedo. So that one works pretty well. And then you also have kind of the magical handheld device, the bioelectrical impedance, which unfortunately is notoriously inaccurate. And it annoys the heck out of me when gyms do their free body fat percentage test and you can get a test, find out you're at whatever 15%, walk back five minutes later, get tested again, and you're at 20.

So I have one of those at home and I generally do three tests a minute apart and then just average them.

Yeah.

Because they do fluctuate, not wildly, but they do fluctuate from moment to moment.

Yeah. I mean, if you got to make, you know, lemonade out of lemons and that's all you have, just make sure that you measure at the same time of day every time you measure that you're in the same state of hydration. You know, basically you just try and dial in as close as possible and then do like Brock does and measure it three times and you're gonna get a decent ballpark. But if you really want to know, you know, whatever body fat that you're getting, whether or not you are where you should be. I'm gonna put a cool little body fat percentage measurement chart for women in the show notes. And what it is, is it lists your age from, from 18 up to 60. So my apologies to all the high schoolers and seniors listening in. Apparently there are no body fat percentage measurement charts for people who fall into your group.

Well, it does say 56 and up.

Yes, that is true. 56 and up. So there you go. And it'll show you what lean would be considered, what ideal would be considered, what average would be considered, and what above average would be considered. And this is important because essential body fat levels are really, really crucial. Like when I was a bodybuilder and I got down to 3% body fat, I looked nice in pictures, but I had no sex drive and I was like this piece of muscle who just laid around on the couch and ate and then got up to lift. So 3 to 5% is essential body fat levels in men, and 8 to 12% are essential body fat levels in women. Now, I'm not saying that's what goal you should shoot for, but that's the point where you're getting dangerously close to too low. Now, in most athletic women who are kind of like in anywhere below menopause, usually they, they look good and they feel pretty good. Anywhere in like the 12 to 20% range is what I've found in guys. We're usually like about 8 to 15% ish. I know that, that I feel really, really great as far as like my libido, my sex drive, my energy levels. When I'm around 7 to 8%, like I look good, but I, but I also feel good. So there are outliers though. My wife is at, I think she's at about 9% body fat. Now. When I tested her back when she was a runner, she was closer to 7%. She was, she was regular, never missed a period, had her sex drive, felt good, no brain fog. And she, you know, she comes from like the, the, the skinny Montana rancher genes. So that's just genetic, you know, that's very, very uncommon that you're gonna find somebody like that who, who actually, you know, is a functioning healthy female who's not just completely hormonally messed up at 8 or 9% body fat. So you, you do want to make sure that you maintain healthy levels of body fat. As far as this question being at 15% body fat and 25 years old. Well, if we use this chart and we look at the 25 year old age range and we look at kind of like the lean. Lean is about 12 to 18%. So that would be like, like, kind of like, you know, bikini lean, ideal for fertility and health and all that jazz, which, you know, kind of just depends on your goals, is about 20 to 24%. So at 15%, I mean that is not bad at all for a 25 year old woman, frankly. You know, that's the point where you want to kind of start listening to your body and making sure that you're not missing your periods and that you're, you're, you're feeling good. That reminds me that over at Endurance Planet there was recently a really, really good interview on women and running and, and just like hormones and how to time your biggest workouts for what time of the month that you're in, like when your estrogen levels peak according to where you're at in your period. And that's actually a really good one to go listen to. We should link to that in the show notes, if you remember. So we need to remember to link to the body metrics and to the Endurance Planet episode on women and running. So yeah, as far as body fat percentages, go check out that chart. If you really want to get something super duper accurate, find somebody at your gym who's got a, you know, calipers or else go hunt down a bod pod or some underwater weighing or the little cannibal device.

I'm gonna have a quick drink. I think my water bottle's making a lot of noise. It's my Ben Greenfield fitness BPA for.

You bottle sucking on the Ben Greenfield fitness teat. I like it.

Hi Ben, this is Jim. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about lactose and how it's processed by the body, how it differs from fructose and sucrose, its effect on blood sugar levels, its effect on insulin levels, and also touch on igf. I recently started logging all my food and was surprised to find that between 50 and 90% of my daily carbohydrate intake is in the form of milk sugar. As an FYI, I don't have any milk issues. I drink between 2 and 3 gallons of milk a week, generally in the form of a grass fed, non homogenized pasteurized milk. Thanks. Love the show.

Now, two to three gallons a week, that, that seems like a lot of milk.

Well, what's he doing? Grass fed, non homogenized, pasteurized. You know, if I was, let's put it this way, if I was wanting to put on a bunch of muscle and I was paying attention to like, you know, my heart rate, response to what it was I was drinking and kind of like how my stomach felt, I wouldn't have a huge issue with that amount of dairy consumption, assuming that it is from like a Nice grass fed, organic raw dairy source. Like in the anti aging podcast that we just came out with last week, I talked about how, you know that Greek island of Icaria, one of the longest living populations on the planet, in addition to drinking two to three glasses of wine a day, drank a lot of milk. Raw goat's milk. Yeah, goat's milk, yeah. And I know that milk kind of gets, gets vilified a lot of times in like the Paleo community, but there's a lot of pretty good human evidence that shows that milk is good for you if you're drinking the real stuff. So there was one study that found that people with the highest level of milk fat biomarkers which suggested that they consumed the most amount of dairy fat, actually had a lower risk of heart attack. And in women it was pretty significant. The risk of heart attack was reduced by 26% based off how much of the milk fat biomarker that they had in their bloodstream. There was another study that showed that people who ate the most full fat Dairy had a 69% lower risk of cardiovascular death than people who ate the least amount of full fat dairy.

69, dude.

There was a review, like a meta analysis of 10 different studies that found that milk drinking is associated with significant reduction in heart disease and stroke risk. And in most cases, if you look at things that vilify milk, like let's say the China Study, you know, T. Colin Campbell is pretty infamous for his research that links casein, which is a protein, in dairy products, with cancer. And you know, in that particular book, he made the leap to conclude that all animal proteins cause cancer and should be avoided. But what he neglected to mention was that whey, which is another protein that you find in dairy, it has anti cancer effects that cancel out the cancer promoting effects of casein, you know, and that comes down to the fact that it's important whenever we're looking at this stuff to study whole foods and not just nutrients. Now, of course, not all milk is created equal. So you know, raw dairy is a whole healthy food that contains all of its intact fats and nutrients and enzymes. And pasteurized dairy I would consider to be a processed food. So for example, if we look at lactose, many, many people do not produce lactase enzymes on their own. They need to consume dairy products that actually have the active lactase enzyme intact in that dairy. Well, raw milk is what contains lactase, which is the enzyme that's needed to digest lactose. And pasteurization kills lactase. And so folks who can't tolerate pasteurized dairy, or who maybe produce a lot of mucus and don't feel good and get bloating and gas and that kind of stuff from pasteurized dairy. They do just fine with raw milk. And so if you were going to say drink a bunch of milk for the insulin like growth factor effect, which I'll talk about in a second, then it would be important to actually get your hands on some raw dairy. I would consider anything else to be a franken food. So pasteurized homogenized dairy I would not be consuming. Now, the whole idea behind dairy and behind lactose is that you do get a pretty significant insulin response to the consumption of dairy. And that is because lactose is just two different types of sugars stuck together. It's galactose and it's glucose, and those are fairly simple sugars. And so when you consume them, you do get a blood sugar response. That's why me, when I'm doing this, this whole ketogenesis thing, I can't really do much yogurt or milk, even if it's full fat, just because of the amount of lactose sugars that are.

I was gonna ask that. If it's full fat, wouldn't that slow down the insulin release or slow down the digestion the a little bit?

But you got to remember, protein also elicits an insulin secretion. And when you look at dairy, it's the protein plus the carbs that are responsible for the really big insulin release that you get from dairy foods. It's an even bigger insulin release than in a lot of other high glycemic index foods like candy and wheat bread and stuff like that. And the reason for that is because when you look at dairy proteins, they're really, really high in amino acids like leucine and valine and lysine and isoleucine, all these branched chain amino acids, and these are considered really insulin genic proteins. And they're going to be highest specifically if you take like isolated whey protein. Well, this is why whey protein and branched chain amino acids help you to put on muscle really quickly. If that's your goal. You can get pretty, pretty swole pretty quick when you're combining lifting with whole dairy consumption or whey protein and branched chain amino acid consumption. Like that's a way that you can put on muscle pretty quickly. And so if you tolerate dairy from like an allergenic standpoint, that insulin response when timed post workout is really going to help you recover faster. And it's going to help drive amino acids and the glucose that is a byproduct of the lactose breakdown into your bloodstream. So you know, that's, that's why milk helps babies grow into big people and calves grow into big cows. You know, so it's really not an issue if that's your goal to put on muscle or your goal is to recover faster and you don't have an issue with that. And it's because of the huge insulin like growth factor release that you get from that insulin genic response to, to dairy consumption. You know, in my case, if you look at me, skinny, endurance athlete, trains a lot, eats a low carb diet, doesn't do much dairy. You know, in my case, my insulin levels are very low. They're too low. If I really wanted to get myself up to a healthy, fertile, muscle bound weight, I would actually be consuming more raw dairy. You know, it's one of the reasons why after I crossed the finish line of Ironman Hawaii this year, I'm actually going to be putting on a bunch of muscle, kind of getting off a full ketogenic diet, doing a little bit more cyclic and beginning to include some of these more insulin producing foods in my diet because I want to spend a little bit of time in my life putting on muscle and getting fertile and basically becoming a little bit more ancestrally healthy, so to speak. So yeah, as far as dairy goes, you know, if you have no issues with dairy and you'd know that by paying attention to the way you look, you feel and you perform, paying attention to for example, your heart rate after you consume the food. And we've talked about how you could use like the Sweet Beat heart rate variability app for something like that in previous shows and you, you know, maybe you've even gone out and you've gotten like an immunoglobulin test which shows that you don't have a really big reaction, you know, big sensitivity to dairy. Yeah, I mean I would be sucking down a glass of raw milk, preferably raw goat's milk because it's better absorbed. It's more what's called thermodynamically favorable because the size of the protein in goats is a little bit more compatible with human absorption capabilities. But yeah, like gold standard raw goat's milk after a workout. Like if you want to recover from fast. Sure. I mean the chocolate milk, what do they call it? What's the chocolate milk campaign? My recovery, is that what it's called?

Something like that.

Every professional athlete on the face of the planet with their little milk mustache this big Chocolate milk campaign. Yeah, I mean that stuff will cause the same insulin like growth factor release, but have a lot of side effects along with it. Whole raw dairy post workout boom. Big fan. So my apologies to all the paleo folks out there, but I see no issues whatsoever, especially based off of what I've seen in human studies, not in test tube studies, on the benefits of dairy.

Hi Ben, I recently got a standing desk at work and I stand anywhere from probably four to six hours a day and have found that it takes me, or it seems to take me significantly longer to recover between workouts when I'm standing a lot more at work. And I wondered if that was the case, if there would be any scientific reason why it would take me longer to recover from a workout if I'm standing more or if that's just all in my imagination. My main goal is basically just to stay thin and fit and I'm not training for any events or anything. So some guidelines on the optimal balance between standing and so that I don't have a super sedentary lifestyle and getting recovery so that I can do some high intensity intervals and some weightlifting would be great. Thanks for the podcast.

You know, I found the exact opposite when I started using a standing workstation. I found that I actually recovered really quickly and didn't get as much muscle soreness as well after a really hard or a long run.

Yeah, you know, it depends on a few things, Brock, it depends on your posture. Ergonomics are really important. I mean, you want that computer at just below shoulder height so you're not reaching up or reaching down. You preferably want something that you can put one leg up on, like a stool or something that can kind of, kind of shift your weight from side to side so that you're not just putting like this sheer force, you know, kind of a combination of that shearing horizontal force and axial downward force on your knees and your spine and your lower back. And I've personally found that standing for long periods of time can make my legs feel heavy at the end of the day and can even make my low back feel tight, my knees a little bit sore. I've found that I can mitigate that by interspersing periods of sitting with standing. And for me personally, I do my best writing when I'm sitting. I do my best work, you know, email response, reactive response consulting, stuff like that when I'm standing. And then when I really just want to like get down and write, I put, I have like a laptop, what's it called, like kind of Like a tray that my laptop goes on protector. Yeah. Well, I've got a wooden tray that was designed with these little pads that you can, you can type while you're sitting down. But then I put my nut protector on top of that. It's called a HERA pad. It blocks electromagnetic field radiation from the bottom of your laptop. So I put that on top of the, the tray and then I sit down on the couch kind of with my feet elevated a little bit. And if I'm really in geek mode, I'll throw on some compression tights. I'll do the 110% compression tights, put some ice in those for a little cold thermogenesis. If you're getting the idea. I'm, I'm big time into multitasking. So it's like if I'm going to sit down and write it for an hour, that's great if I'm getting compression and cold thermogenesis at the same time, you know, so I'll sit down and do that and then get back up and stand. And if you leave the compression tights on and having the ice in them is fine too, you know, burn a few extra calories, soothe some sore muscles, that can really help as well as, you know, like, I keep a foam roller beside my standing workstation and I'll foam roll every now and again. I keep a golf ball underneath my standing workstation and I do like golf ball rolling with my feet. So I'm always just kind of like taking care of my body the whole time I'm standing there and working. And I talked about this in my Underground training tactics article about how if you spend the entire day on your feet and then you're one of those people that works out like later on in the day, like in the evening, you actually get a training effect. Right? Because, you know, let's say you're getting ready for an Ironman triathlon where you're going to spend 3, 4, 5 hours on your feet out there running by going out and doing a high intensity interval training session for running or a track workout or some kind of a run after you've spent the day on your feet, you actually do get some of that endurance training effect as well. And you don't, you know, you don't have to have a full on treadmill workstation to get that. You can just stand up and do it. Over at our facebook page@facebook.com bgfitness I posted a photo of a new kind of standing workstation protocol that I'm Using this summer to get my vitamin D and a little bit of sun and keep me more alert and awake. I have a standing workstation outside, and it's out by the garden where we've got all of our kale and our romaine lettuce and our strawberries growing. I've got a shelter shade. There's a special shade that you can just, like, get off Amazon. It's called a sunshade. You put it on your laptop, it blocks all screen glare, and it still allows access to the keyboard. And you can just stand there and work and no bird poop on the keyboard yet. The other thing that I have is. And this is kind of really getting out there, I have an inversion table in my garage, and two to three times a week, I inverted. I go out there and I hang for anywhere from five to 10 minutes to get blood kind of back out of the legs. Feels really good. Like, you know, especially now in my. In my final stages of training for Ironman Canada, I'm training a little bit more in the weekend. So, like, on a Monday morning, after I've been kind of training on Saturday and Sunday, I'll go out there and hang for about 10 minutes. And it just drains the legs. But it also works really well if you spent the day at a. At a standing workstation, and you can replicate that by just kind of sitting up against the wall and getting your feet up. But, yeah, an inversion table would be another thing to look into. So, yeah, there's all sorts of ways you can mitigate the kind of the heavy leg syndrome that you can get from standing at a standing workstation. But those are some of the ways I do it. And in the show notes, what I'll do for you is I will. I'll put that picture for you of my standing workstation, my outdoor standing workstation with my little sunshade.

Nice.

Hey, man, I love the podcast. I always learn a lot listening to y'. All. And I love the bromance between you and Brock.

It's.

It's pretty funny. Anyway, I have a slapped hair surgery on my left shoulder at the beginning of August, just three days after Half Ironman Steelhead up here in southwest Michigan. I know what to expect because I got my right shoulder done last summer. Summer. The exact same surgery. I've got two questions. One, should I do anything to speed recovery on those three days between my half Ironman and surgery? I don't want to roll into the operating room hurting too badly because the aftermath of the surgery itself will be painful.

Enough.

If it's anything like the first time I got it done last time, I did gain a lot of weight, mostly fat. I'm trying to curb this as much as possible by burning a lot of fat and dropping weight before both my half ironman and surgery, since they're around the same time. Thanks again for all your help and I look forward to your answer.

You know, slap tear surgery just sounds pretty badass.

Yeah, well, it sounds a little terrifying, to be honest.

Slap you in the face, tear into your shoulder, your shoulder, do some surgery.

There's no anesthetic. It's just a slap.

Yeah, slap tear surgery. We won't get into slap dirt surgery just because I don't think that many people probably care about what slap tear surgery is. Let's. Let's get into the new.

I think we did a good job of summing it up right there. We take it.

We should be surgeons. So three days between your race and your surgery, if I were in your shoes, I can tell you exactly what I would do. First thing, I would shut down as much inflammation as you can because you don't want to go into surgery inflamed from that 70.3 chock full of these cytokines and interleukins and C reactive protein and all the nasty stuff that builds up in your body. That that's necessary, that's a natural reaction. But that is not going to do you any favors when it comes to not being in a stressed out, very kind of hypercortisolic state going into your surgery. So first thing I would do, if it were me, I would be doing cold thermogenesis every day. So on that day that you finish, I would do a nice cold bath, 55 degrees or lower. I would be getting good 30 to 60 minutes of cold thermogenesis exposure every day between your half and your surgery. The nice thing is that cold thermogenesis also assists with developing pain tolerance. So if you've got any, you know, incision pains, things like that, post surgery, can help out a little bit with that, you know Jack Cruz, Dr. Jack Cruz from JackCruise.com, probably one of kind of like the Internet experts on cold thermogenesis, is a neurosurgeon, and I know he uses ice packs and cold thermo for a lot of his patients pre surgery for some of these same reasons. So some cold thermogenesis would be good. If you don't know how to do it, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for cold thermogenesis. I've interviewed Jack a bunch. I've got articles on how to do it. I would also recommend loading on some specific supplements that are going to help you recover faster, both leading up to the surgery and then after the surgery. Big ones would be vitamin C, iron from a non constipating source like you know, like using like Floradix or just eating a lot of red meat would be another way to do it because you're going to get some good enzymes and amino acids with that. I'm a big fan of proteolytic enzymes. There's one called Wobenzymes that's really good. There's another one that I use that you can get at Pacific Elite Fitness called Recoveries and that's a really, really good one. You just load with these prior to surgery. There's actually a recovery pack and I've personally designed this recovery pack for kind of the ultimate combination of post workout muscle building and also recovering like post race. And it is a combination of proteolytic enzymes specifically from recovery. So you get a bottle of recoveries organic goat protein that's cold processed and so from there you get a lot of the benefits that we just got done talking about when it comes to insulin like growth factor and growth factor release. It comes with a bottle of essential amino acids and these are the proteins that are pre digested. You get no calories but a ton of protein with 99% amino acid absorption for rebuilding and repairing muscle. And then the last, last thing is a really, really potent antioxidant blend called life shots and that helps you repair connective tissue. It also helps with, with anti aging and building, you know, skin, hair, nails, stuff like that. But I would also be loading with it in a situation like this. So I mean if you were, if you were to just get that recovery pack and only do that, that would be a really, really good way to do it. And it just all kind of comes to you in a box to your house. I've got a book, a free ebook that I'll also link to in the show Notes that talks a little bit more about some stuff that kind of flies under the radar. Glutathione, high dose vitamin C, all these other things. It's called how to Recover like Wolverine from X Men. I decided to go with a really subtle title for that one. So check that out. I'll put a link to that free ebook in the show notes for Steve or anybody else who wants to grab it. And then another Few things, you know, as far as the recovery period after surgery and controlling appetite. One big thing, and this is something that I found more and more to be the case because I've been really focusing on using my Mondays as a recovery day and not really even eating much. And it's been hard for me, honestly, I didn't realize how much I actually kind of, kind of tended to eat on a, on a recovery day versus focusing a little bit more on some of the benefits, some of the anti inflammatory benefits and the cell, what's called the cellular autophagy benefits of fasting. I've been trying to limit my calorie intake one day a week and combine that with, with just some easy stuff, some cold thermogenesis, some yoga, stuff like that. And it's kind of for two reasons. One is the repairing benefits of moderate fasting. And then the other is that, and this is just a total mental thing, but like when I don't eat as much, I'm less tempted to train. Does that kind of make sense? Like if I eat a huge, huge meal of a thousand calories, I'm like, I got to go on a run this afternoon. Excuse me, I'm going to sneeze. Just a second. That's good podcasting right there. So anyways, the thing is that if you can. My sneeze totally threw my mental function off kilter.

I'm the same way. I think when you've had a big meal, you definitely want to compensate it. You're driven to have that compensating for it by burning off some extra calories or amping up your metabolism a little bit.

So the trick that I've found is that on Mondays I find other things to give me that dopamine release that food gives me because I like food. You know, it's rewarding, it's palatable. And that's great. That's one of the cool things about eating, right. But there are other things that give you that same effect. So on Mondays I've been doing some special things with my kids. Like for example, this week we did. What did we do this week? Oh, we went, we went to swim lessons and then we went exploring down at the river and just like swam around in the river and, you know, caught crawdads and just kind of hung out. And I get a big dopamine release from hanging out with my kids. I also have been playing guitar more on Mondays because that's, I really enjoy music. And that's another kind of like food distractor for me. Any hobbies, anything that kind of helps you out at the risk of tmi, have been trying to have sex on Mondays, like, you know, midday quickie. And you know, my wife doesn't complain. And you know, it sounds stupid that that is one of my appetite control methods, but we're talking anything that causes that, that dopamine release and, and you know, these are all little things that it's like we use food so much when there are so many other things that can cause pleasure. And so I think that's important when you're not able to eat. Now, I don't know if you with a, with a giant cast and you know, your slapped tear surgery, recovery are going to be able to, you know, go out and bang somebody in recovery mode. But you know, I'm just throwing some stuff out there for you now.

Maybe not do the banging, but to receive the banging.

Yes, there you go. There you go. A slap, a tear and a bang. The other thing is they have these, and this is kind of funky. They have these smell sticks that help you with appetite control. And you smell them. I'm totally not kidding. I have some like this company, like smelling salts.

Like you snap it under your nose and you go, oh yeah, oh yeah.

You don't have to snap them. You just smell them and they have like these special aromas that it's like aromatherapy. There are certain compounds in aromatherapy medicine that are appetite suppressants and these things just have them in them. So I'll link to smell sticks in the show notes, but I'll tell you what, for people listening in because I, I honestly have a bunch of extra smell sticks for appetite control that I'm not using. First person who hears this podcast and leaves a comment on the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 248 first comment 276 oh, is it 2? I thought was 2 48.

I think you're right.

Wait, it's 2. It's 248 for sure. Yes, I know it is. So BenGreenfieldFitness.com 248 I'll mail you some. I'll message you privately after you leave your comment. I don't care what your comment is, whatever, just keep it clean and I'll mail you some smell sticks unsmeilled, still wrapped and unsmeilled. So you have to worry about my snot on them. And then a few other things for appetite control. You know, I'm never a big fan of just like turning to supplements to shut down Appetite because I think it's. It doesn't really help you mentally to feel like you have to rely on supplements to shut down your appetite. But these are things I recommend to people on fasting days. One is a good greens supplement. So I like something like some, some capra greens powder stirred into a glass of water and that's just like minerals and spirulina and stuff like that. You could also go for Enterprime. You could go for like these energy bits from energybits.com which are like chewable algae tabs. Any of that stuff gives you basically calorie restriction with nutrient density, which is especially good if you've got a fasting day. Also good if you want to shut down appetite cravings when you don't want to be eating that many calories. Amino acids, same thing like master amino pattern essential amino acids. You pop five to 10 of those, those can shut down appetite cravings when you do eat. If you're trying to limit weight control, then use something like bitter melon extract to control blood sugar levels. I use MPX100 for that. And I'll put a link to all this stuff in the show notes. And then the last thing is coconut oil. No insulin response. It's still going to satiate the appetite. That's one that works well for like nighttime cravings too. Just go get yourself a tablespoon of coconut oil and it'll get you relatively satiated again without causing that insulin spike. FYI, if you put it on a dark chocolate bar, it tastes really, really good. But that does cause an insulin spike. Not speaking from personal experience, I'm just saying I saw it on TV once, of course. Yeah. So those are some of the things I'd recommend. And we'll of course link to all of this stuff in the show notes for you. So. Ben Greenfield Fitness, including the smell sticks.

248 hey, Ben, this is Tim from Colorado. I'm currently training for a half marathon that starts at 9,500ft of elevation, ends just shy of 12,000. It's a very technical running course with a lot of steep downhills that are all on a road. And last year I was pretty beat up from it. And I've used some things that you've taught me with some cold thermogenesis and some great recovery techniques. I'm just looking for any suggestions of how to go a little faster. Last year I got seventh place. Any advice on fueling strategies, how to lessen the impact of the really tough downhill run, and anything else you could Help me to try to go into this taper for this race that is exactly one month from today. Thanks a lot. I love your very entertaining and informative podcast.

Okay, my first question here is, if the race starts at 9,000ft and ends at 12,000ft, how is there some very steep downhills?

You know, I figured it's probably like long uphill climbs with some. With some quick downhills. That's all I can think. Or maybe. Maybe there's like some kind of like a helicopter that you hop onto as part of the race that. Yeah, there's a bottom of the hill. Again, treadmill on the helicopter. Yeah, yeah.

It's probably like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, and you just. Like somebody keeps knocking the rock, so you have to run back down and get it and push it back up.

Yes, yes. Did you say Sisis?

Sisyphus.

Sisyphus. We talked about Sisis, the fat loss supplement. Kind of sounded like that shisha fish. Okay, so running downhill, first of all, for preparing your body for the rigors of that, I've got some exercises for you. Boy, do I have some exercises for you. Definitely. Depth jumps. Love them.

Because you depth jumps.

Yes. There's a spike of coals. It's like. It's like Mario, where you jump off the cliff.

No, no. Depth depth jumps.

Depth jumps. You get onto a box, a raised platform, stairs, steps, park bench, church, puke, whatever, and you step off and then you land with either both feet for a double leg depth jump, or you land with one feet for a single leg depth jump. And as soon as you land, you reverse direction and jump. So it trains your body how to absorb impact and then also trains your plyometric reaction, your stretch reflex reaction, to produce a quick contraction as soon as your foot hits the ground. So the goal is minimum ground contact time, and you're also landing from a fairly elevated surface. So you get some what's called eccentric loading that kind of trains your. Your bones and your muscles and your tendons and your ligaments to withstand the impact, the. The joint impact and the hard impact of downhill running. So I'm a fan of depth jumps for that.

But just to be clear, you're not jumping back up onto the platform, the elevated platform. You're just jumping straight up, turn around.

Step back up there, you know, and start again.

So you hit the ground, jump straight up, back down to the ground, then step back up and do another one.

Yeah. If you go to the YouTube Ben Greenfield Fitness page at YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness There are photographs of me clad in spandex doing depth jumps. It's really sexy.

Better than us trying to describe it on in audio.

I don't think we did that bad of a job, anything eccentric. And I'm a really big fan of super slow squats. For this. You just put a barbell on your, on your back and you do super slow squats. You can also do eccentric calf raises. The problem I have with calf raises is they don't give you a lot of bang for your buck. I mean, if you're going to do an eccentric exercise, you might as well burn some calories and build some muscle and get yourself strong in the process. So I'm a bigger fan of eccentric squats. And all eccentric means is you're going to take, let's say 10 seconds to lower the bar and then you just come up at a normal pace, you know, two to three seconds and then another slow lowering. So you're training that muscle again to lengthen and to tear and then to be able to repair and recover quickly after that lengthening and that tearing. And you don't want to do super slow, eccentric workouts any closer than about 48 hours. So be careful. You know, don't, don't go out and grab a barbell and start doing eccentric squats in your garage every day or your ass is going to call me up on the phone and complain. But you know, moderate amounts of eccentric squats and then just basically including downhill running in your program, that's really important too. And using proper technique when you run downhill, that is so important. So when it comes to running downhill, kind of the problem is the opposite of what happens when you run uphill. You, you get too much backward lean when you run downhill. Usually when you run uphill, people lean forward too much. I'll actually talk about it in a second. I'll tell you how to run uphill. When you're running downhill, the gut reaction is to shift your weight backwards. That's what you want to do. And when you shift your weight backwards, that slows you down. You know, it's a braking effect, it's a protective effect. But when you're trying to go fast in a race, braking and self protection is okay to throw to the wind. So if you want to slow down, then leaning backwards is the right choice. But running downhill gives you this free gravity assisted increase in running speed. And you want to take advantage of that if you can. When you lean back, you throw your center of gravity behind your body and so you got to wait until your feet have passed back under that center of gravity for you to start generating force again. So you get all these increased braking forces. So you instead you want to lean forward. You don't want to lean too slightly too or too much forward because then you're going to careen out of control.

Yeah, that's dangerous.

Yeah. But you want to just lean a little bit forward. So find that balance between using the speed from running downhill and then running so fast that you get out of control and it just throws your pacing way, way off. And just go out and practice this. Just keep your center of gravity as much in front of your body as you can without getting completely out of control. And then really, really focus on fast feet, quick stride. I usually throw my arms out to the side a little bit for that side to side balance. But it's okay to be a little bit messy when you're running downhills. You know, a lot of control. Yeah. You use that. Think about lean and go. Lean and go is kind of a good little, little mental trick to think about.

I like to think up rather than forward too. Instead of leaning forward, just lean up.

Yeah.

Because when you're on a hill, you're already sort of. It's going to go forward if you just think towards the sky. It gives you that lightness.

Yeah. And then for the, for the uphills, which it sounds like you're going to be doing a lot more of. Frankly, your natural reaction when you start running up a hill is to lean into the hill by bending forward at the waist. And some degree of forward lean is necessary when you're running up a hill. But most people lean way too far forward. And this negative impacts your ability to run uphill in a few different ways. It inhibits your ability to flex your hips and drive your knee up. So I mean, you could just try it right now while you're listening. Lean forward at the waist, then try and drive your knee up. It's hard to do. You have way less range of motion. So an excessive forward lean.

You kick myself in the chin.

Yeah. Or you kick yourself in the chin if you're Canadian. So it shortens your hip flexor's range of motion and that hurts your running efficiency. It inhibits your ability to produce a good toe off during the drive phase of the gait. So again, try and lean forward at the waist. Try and push with toe off. It's hard to do. So to take full advantage of all the energy that's stored in your calf muscles when you're Running uphill, you got to be able to fully extend your leg behind you, and you can only do that if you're thinking about running tall when you run uphill. So don't think about. I mean, you can lean forward, but the lean forward needs to be your whole body, not from your waist. And so that will allow you to extend your glutes behind you. Yeah, exactly. And then it also, when you lean forward, it throws your body off balance. It moves your center of gravity way too far forward, and this, again, makes it really hard for your glutes to drive your legs backwards. So it's kind of like zigzagging in a pool. For example, if you're in a pool and you bend too far forward at the waist, you start to zigzag side to side. So you want to just like what? You want to swim tall when you're in the pool, you want to stand tall when you run uphill. So you think about standing tall, you think about driving with your hips. And usually in a case like this, to maintain efficiency and economy and not to get your heart rate out of control, kind of slightly shorter, choppier steps work a little bit better. Those are some of the things that you should do when you are. When you're running uphill and when you're running downhill. So. Yeah, Sounds like a. Sounds like a killer half marathon, though. Oh, did he want. Did he want to know how to eat? He wanted to know how to fuel, didn't he?

Oh, yeah. I think he did mention some feeling just as an afterthought.

Dude, I mean, don't even worry that much about it. Honestly, eat a good breakfast like a couple hours prior. Well, you've got two options. You either eat a good breakfast a couple hours prior, and then you just go out and run and, you know, just carry a quick hit of something with you if you want something super quick while you're running. Honestly, for something as short as this, I wouldn't even mess around with, like, carrying flasks and all that jazz if it were me, really, because it's just a half marathon. I mean, you know, I know this might sound like heresy coming from the superstar low fat fueling guy, but I just throw a freaking gel in my pocket and slam it halfway, halfway up. You really. You've got almost enough storage calories to make it through a half marathon. The other option, if you.

You need to have some water, at.

Least if it's hot and you're slow and you're going to be out there more than two hours. You may want to consider doing this. You eat a slow release breakfast. Like you have like a serving of Superstarch with some coconut milk for breakfast. So it's all just like fatty acid release. And then you get a flask and you put a serving of Superstarch in there. And if you really want to get all nerdy, you do some of my underground techniques. Like you put some D ribose, you know, like throw a shot of X2 performance in there. You know, throw some amino acids in there. You know, like chew up some amino acids and spit them into the flask. Literally. That's what I do. One of the other things that are in my. Oh, Vespa. Vespa Wasp extract.

Wasp juice.

Yeah. I mean that's exactly what I'm going to be using for Ironman is basically I'm using the endurance pack from Pacific Elite Fitness, which is x2 performance Vespa WASP X extract. Just because it's, it's sexy. The X2 performance and then Superstarch. And so like all of that is mixed into a bottle. And then I'm putting a little bit of MCT oil in that too. Like some of Dave Asprey's bulletproof MCT oil. I tested that because it's a weird mix. Like it's a bunch of just like random stuff. But I've been thinking about this and setting it and trialing this stuff for, for a while and man, it's money. It's just, it's just gold. I went out and hammered on my mountain bike for two and a half hours up in the hills. Came back, threw down a 30 minute run and was just burning clean the whole time. No gas, no bloating, bada boom, bada bing. So there you go now.

But you're doing that for an Ironman. We're talking about a half marathon here. So that's. That'd be a little bit overkill. Unless you're really gonna be taking your time.

It'd be way overkill. I just started to talk about.

You just got excited.

I just got excited.

Really? It comes down to have a good breakfast or just have a gel ready to go in case you start to bonk. If it's really hot, make sure you stay hydrated. But you're probably going to be okay.

That's right. And speaking of getting excited, want to hear what the top itunes review of this week was?

I sure do. I've been waiting for this the whole show.

So we'll put a link in the show notes because if you leave a review and I read it on the show, then that means. And you hear your review and you email me. I know this is getting really complex. If you hear me read your review and you email me, I will send you a really cool care package. Maybe even some smell sticks. So Sean K27 left a five star A plus review, and here's what he said. Since listening to the Ben Greenfield podcast religiously, I've been the best shape of my life. Religiously? Yeah.

Are you the Pope of fitness?

We are gods. Ben filters the BS out of the overwhelming amount of fitness and health advice out there.

What does BS stand for?

I don't know, but he spelled advice with an S, not a C. It's. It's with the C, Sean. And then he says, when I'm 110 years old and on my deathbed, the young folk will ask my secrets to longevity. I will pull them close. This is kind of creepy. I'll pull them close and whisper three words. Ben Greenfield Fitness.

Oh, I like where he's going with that, but it's a little Young folk. Stay away from Sean K27. Greenfield Fitness.com see him grabbing the kids by their heads.

Grandfather's last words. Website. I don't know. All right, well, cool. So that being said, like, like we warned you, we have a really cool commercial about the Perfect Health Diet coming up. It's actually, it's not even a commercial. It's. I guess it's kind of a commercial anyways. An infomercial. Check it out. Register if you want to get into that perfect, Perfect Health Diet retreat, because it's going to rock. Leave your review. And also if you want to spread the love, where do they go?

Brock BenGreenfieldFitness.com Love.

Or as we love to say, love.

Yeah, but don't spell it like that or you'll get a pager.

You'll get to our weaving page@bengreenfieldfitness.com my side project. All right, folks, folks, that's about it. Thanks for listening in. Enjoy this infomercial. Have a healthy week and we'll catch you later. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And there is one diet on the face of the planet that I have endorsed more than any other diet that I've ever talked about on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, and that is the Perfect Health Diet, which is based off of the book of the same name, the Perfect Health Diet, written by Paul Geminet, who has been a guest on this podcast before. If you have no clue what the Perfect Health diet is, then of course, I would recommend that you read the book Perfect Health Diet, but I would also recommend that you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search there for Perfect Health Diet and go read a little bit about this diet that it really increases your health, your mood, your energy, but is based off of solid science and a very kind of clean eating protocol that tastes good, too. Now, in the meals and the diet programs that I create for my clients and the athletes that I coach, when I'm sitting there, you know, looking at, you know, whatever, how much someone is crossfitting or weightlifting or swimming or cycling or running, one of my go to resources as far as laying out their meals and putting meals into their program that aren't going to give them a stomach ache, that aren't going to result in autoimmune reactions, that are actually going to allow the body to burn its own fat as a fuel, allow the body to restore and repair lean muscle. My resource there is the Perfect Health Diet. So the reason that I'm telling you all this right now is because Paul shot me an email. Paul, the author of the Perfect Health Diet, shot me an email a couple of weeks ago and gave me some really, really cool news about something called the Perfect Health Retreat that they're now doing. And I have the proprietor of the Perfect Health Retreat, which takes place right down by Austin, Texas, on the call with me today to tell you about how this retreat could change your life if you're looking for kind of the final nutrition solution. His name is Damon Young. Damon, thanks for coming on the call today.

Hey, Ben, good to be here.

So you guys created the Perfect Health Retreat. Tell me why, what exactly is this for?

Well, I'm an older guy. I'm in my late 50s, and I've had some health problems for decades, especially weight and diabetes and various other ailments. And I had converted to a pretty much a paleo lifestyle about a year and a half ago and did quite well on it, but I just wasn't feeling that well. My numbers were getting a little better, but it wasn't as good as I wanted to be. That's when I found the Perfect Health Diet and read it and began following that lifestyle. And the changes were just really amazing. All my blood sugars and all that are completely normalized. I've had energy. I just felt good about living again. So I was really excited about it. And we've had a place here, a retreat in South Central Austin called Albert Oaks. Yes, sir, Got it. And we've been Around a couple of years. But it was just a retreat for people to come go with come and see Austin and no real direction. Well, I thought Paul was going to be at the Paleo FX in February this year, so I called him up and asked him if he'd mind staying with us because I wanted to talk to him about some things. So he stayed here and we spent a lot of time together working and decided to just convert this to the perfect health retreat. So that's all we do now. People come here and they are completely immersed in the perfect health diet and completely supportive lifestyle to do it.

Now, what is it that happens to people's bodies as they're there in terms of not only what they're learning, but also what happens to them transformationally on a physical level?

Yeah, well, as you know, reading the book, it just corrects you. The first thing is we get rid of all toxins in your diet and then we replace it with the most nutritional foods available.

So is it a detox in the sense that people are gonna be. Well, there are some retreats out there that are just cleanses, right. Where people are literally cleansing their body for a full month. Is it like that where people are doing that type of cleanse, detox, juice, fast, that type of thing? Or are people kind of eating real food while they're there?

Yeah, we don't really use the word cleanse. It certainly is a cleanse. But people associate that with maple syrup and cayenne fasting and things like that, and we're not about that at all. You will just no longer be putting any toxic food in your mouth while you're here unless you go out. But it's really delicious, good food. That's what really made me such a fan of the diet, is if you can get by without bread, we can make you really happy food.

Food that doesn't taste like cardboard.

The food is just really delicious. And so by not by no longer eating any toxic foods and replacing it with super nutritious foods, you are essentially cleansing your body while you're here. But it's no fasting or Spartan type existence. Now we, I'm sorry, we are real big fans of intermittent fasting and that is pretty much implemented for everybody at least three or four days a week to do that.

So people go there, they're there for a 30 day immersion program, and as they're there, they're learning all about exactly how their body is supposed to feel. You're teaching them how to structure the diet. Are you also teaching kind of like how to cook and prepare a meal so that when people leave they, you know, they know what they're supposed to do or do they need to kind of hire a chef to bring home with them when they finish this thing.

Well, Let me address two things there. One, it's a 30 day program, but we understand a lot of people can't take 30 days off. So we've also devised a, what we call the executive program. And what that is you need to give us a week here. So you'll have to take a week off, but then we'll send you home with the food you need and the room is yours for a month for you to come back as you want or need to for a couple of weekends or midweek, whatever works for you, we'll work with you on that. And that way if you have a real demanding job that you can only take off a week, you can still take advantage of what we offer here. We do all the classes with Paul via Google Hangout or Skype, so you can still attend the classes. We'll send you home with the food and you can come back a couple of times or whatever you want during your month to reinforce and live the life here. But that offers a lot of flexibility and also can bring the cost down quite a bit.

Gotcha. Now I noticed that you guys have a lot of kind of like add ons that I was pleased to see. You've got lighting designed to support optimal circadian rhythms, which I think personally think is very cool and more important than most people realize. You have organic gardens, raised bed gardens, hydroponic gardens, fish beds, hen houses. You know, just looking over your website and I will put, put the website out there in just a second for folks if you're interested in going and checking this out. You've got lots of stuff like that, but you also have kind of like as part of the daily educational program that people are going to be immersed in, you have mentors and experts who are coming in there physically and also that you're piping in via teleconferencing to teach people. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and what kind of folks you're going to have there? Sure.

We don't have a lot of that arranged yet. We've spoken with you and we have that plan for February through March to work with you on during your program for athletes wanting to take to another level. But we've reached out to quite a few members of the Paleo community and since we don't have firm commitments I am reluctant to use names yet, but there will be a lot of people you've heard of involved with us here. We've offered pretty much a standing invitation to anybody that wants to come work with us. We've only begun the last. Well, we finished beta one a couple of weeks ago and we've just started beta two. And while I mention that, let me go ahead and say while we're developing the curriculum here, during beta two, it's half price. And next month, beta three, we're going to offer a 30% discount because it's not all set in stone and firm yet. So we figured we'd go ahead and get people in, start getting results and offer a pretty significant discount here while we're getting started.

Right. And just to clarify, you had mentioned that I'll be coming down there, and that actually is the case. I talked to Damon and to Paul and what they're going to do is kind of like the Perfect Health Diet retreat for the active individual, you know, for like the marathon or triathlete crossfit or, you know, type of person who's really beating up their bodies on a daily basis. Because it is true that you gotta, you know, you gotta tweak your diet, you gotta, you gotta eat more calories. There are some changes that need to be made when you're living an extremely active lifestyle. So the retreat from February through March is gonna focus on that. And I'm actually from March 3rd through 6th gonna be coming in down there in person to teach some clinics specifically on that aspect of the diet and the lifestyle. So all of this, whether you're interested in coming down there from February through March and planning on doing your retreat and your immersion in the Perfect Health diet, then whether you want to get down there sooner, whether you may, you just want to plan this for like, you know, if you're a real in advanced planner, next summer or next fall or, you know, whenever you've kind of got that time to go down there, the website is. And correct me if I'm wrong here, Damon Albertoaks.com Correct.

That's correct. And I freely give out my phone number. It's 512-444-5400. Can you realize.

Can you repeat that?

Yeah, 512-444-5400. We really individualize the program to people to best fit their needs. And we have a very high staff to guest ratio. Never more than 3 to 1, usually more like 2 to 1. So because we're so personal and very limited, we never have more than 15 people here and that would be very unusual to have that many. So we'll talk to you, we'll let you know exactly what you can expect and how we might can work with you to make this of the most benefit possible.

So if you have food allergies, if you have gut issues, if you are confused about your, your diet and where you're supposed to go and you just want that, that kind of like, you know, almost like a hand holding and an education program and a fix for your body all wrapped into one. There's not many retreats or quote unquote cleanses or whatever you want to call them out there that I endorse. But as soon as Paul wrote me an email and showed me what he had planned, I was 100% behind this. And so folks, if you're listening in and this is the type of thing that has always been something that's interested you, this is definitely one that I would stand behind. So check it out@albertoaks.com it's called the Perfect Health Retreat. And if you have any questions, of course I'll put Damon's number that he just went over in the show notes. I will also put a link over to the Albertoaks.com website for you to check out. And you can always pick my brain. If you are wondering whether this would be the right fit for you, you can always email me ben greenfieldfitness.com and I can kind of point you in the right direction as well in terms of whether or not this is the right fit for you. So Damon, thanks for coming on the call today.

Hey, thanks for having me, Ben. I appreciate the time.